Congress slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday over the removal of statues of Mahatma Gandhi, B R Ambedkar and Chhatrapati Shivaji among others from their original place within the Parliament premises.
The statues are said to have been relocated to a lawn near the old building as part of a landscaping exercise.
All the statues, including those of tribal leader Birsa Munda and Maharana Pratap, are now at the same place - the lawn between the old Parliament building and the Parliament library.
Reacting to this, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on microblogging platform X, "Statues of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar have just been removed from their places of prominence in front of the Parliament House. This is atrocious."
Attacking the BJP over the development, Congress's media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said when Maharashtra voters did not vote for BJP, the statues of Shivaji and Ambedkar were removed from their original place in Parliament.
BJP won lesser seats than the INDIA bloc in Maharashtra in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections 2024.
When they did not get clean sweep in Gujarat, they removed the statue of Mahatma Gandhi from its original place in Parliament, he Khera said. "Just think, if they had been given 400 seats, would they have spared the Constitution?" Khera said in a post in Hindi on X.
The Parliament premises will sport revamped look when the 18th Lok Sabha convenes for its maiden session in June as work is underway to integrate the entire complex, comprising four different buildings.
As part of the redevelopment of external areas, the statues of national icons, including those of Gandhi, Shivaji and Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, were to be moved to a lawn near Gate No 5 of the old Parliament building, which has been named as Samvidhan Sadan, according to news agency PTI.
This would pave the way for the creation of a vast lawn in front of the 'Gaja Dwar;, which is used by the President and the Prime Minister to enter into the new Parliament building.
The lawn can also be used for official ceremonies such as the President's address to the joint sitting of Parliament, usually during the Budget Session.
